Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
Theodora complied with her abrupt demand and laid her beautiful white
hand into the no less beautiful one of the woman before her.
Her touch, though the hand was cool, seemed to burn, but Theodora's
touch affected the other woman likewise for she said:
"There is evil enough in the palm of your hand to destroy the
world! We are well met, you and I. You are worthy of my confidence.
These fingers would pick the fruit off the forbidden tree, for men
to eat and die! Lady Theodora--I may some day teach you the great
secret--meanwhile I will show you that I possess it!"
With these words she walked to the chest, took from it an ebony casket
and laid it upon the table.
"There is death enough in this casket," she said, "to kill every man
and woman in Rome!"
Theodora fastened her gaze upon it, as if she would have drawn out the
secret of its contents by the very magnetism of her eyes. For, even
while Sidonia was speaking, a thought flashed through her visitor's
mind--a thought which almost made her forget the purpose on which she
had come. She laid her hands upon it caressingly, trembling, eager to
see its contents.
"Open it!" said Sidonia. "Touch the spring and look!"
Theodora touched the little spring. The lid flew back and there flashed
from it a light which for a moment dazzled her by its very brilliancy.
She thrust the cabinet from her in alarm, imagining she inhaled the
odor of some deadly perfume.
"Its glitter terrifies me!" she said. "Its odor sickens."
"Your conscience frightens you," sneered Sidonia.
Theodora rose to her feet, her face pale, her eyes alight with a
strange fire.
"This to me?" she flashed.
For a moment the two women faced each other in a white silence.
A strange smile played upon Sidonia's lips.
"The Aqua Tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its
possessor as to its victim!"
"You are brave to speak such words to Theodora!"
Sidonia gave her an inscrutable glance.
"Why should I fear you? Even without these,--woman to woman," she
replied, as she drew the casket to herself and took out a phial, gilt
and chased with strange symbols.
Sidonia took it up and immediately the liquid was filled with a million
sparks of fire. It was the Aqua Tofana, undiluted, instantaneous in its
effect, and not medicable by antidotes. Once administered there was
no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have
received the final judgment. One drop of the sparkling water upon the
tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, shrivel him
up to a black, unsightly cinder.
This terrible water was rarely used alone by the poisoners, but it
formed the basis of a hundred slower potions which ambition, fear or
hypocrisy, mingled with the element of time, and colored with the
various hues and aspects of natural disease.
Theodora had again taken her seat and leaned towards Sidonia,
supporting her chin in the palm of her hands, as she bent eagerly over
the table, drinking in every word as the hot sand of the desert drinks
in the water that falls upon it.
"What is that?" she pointed to a phial, white as milk and seemingly
harmless, and while she questioned, her busy brain worked with feverish
activity. The Aqua Tofana she had used when she struck down Roxana and
her too talkative lover on the night of the feast in her garden. But
now she required a different concoction to complete the vengeance on
her rival.
"This is called Lac Misericordiae," replied Sidonia. "It brings on
painless consumption and decay! It eats the life out of man or woman,
while the moon empties and fills. The strong man becomes a skeleton.
Blooming maidens sink to their graves blighted and bloodless. Neither
saint or sacrament can arrest its doom. This phial"--and she took
another from the cabinet, replacing the first--"contains innumerable
griefs that wait upon the pillows of rejected and heartbroken lovers,
and the wisest mediciner is mocked by the lying appearances of disease
that defy his skill and make a mock of his wisdom."
There was a moment's silence. At last Theodora spoke.
"Have you nothing that will cause fear--dread--madness--ere it strikes
the victim dumb forever more? Something that produces in the brain
those dreadful visions--horrid shapes--peopling its chambers where
reason once held sway?"
For a moment Sidonia and Theodora held each other's gaze, as if each
were wondering at the wickedness of the other.
"This," Sidonia said at last, taking out a curiously twisted bottle,
containing a clear crimson liquid and sealed with the mystic Pentagon,
"contains the quintessence of mandrakes, distilled in the alembic, when
Scorpio rules the hour. It will produce what you desire."
"How much of it is required to do this thing?"
"Three drops. Within six hours the unfailing result will appear."
"Give it to me!"
"You possess rare ingenuity, Lady Theodora," said Sidonia, placing her
hand in that of her caller. "If Satan prompts you not, it is because he
can teach you nothing, either in love or stratagem."
She shut up her infernal casket, leaving the phial of distilled
mandrakes, shining like a ruby in the lamp light, upon the table. By
its side lay a bag of gold.
Theodora arose. The eyes of the two women flashed in lurid sympathy as
they parted, and Sidonia accompanied her visitor to the door.
As she did so a heavy curtain in the background parted and the white
face of Basil peered into the empty room.
After a brief interval Sidonia returned.
Her face had again assumed its forbidding aspect as, removing the
phials and seemingly addressing no one, she said:
"We are alone now!"
At the next moment Basil stood in the chamber. His eyes burned with a
feverish lustre, and there was a horror in his countenance which he
strove in vain to conceal.
"This must not be," he said hoarsely. "Why did you give her this
devil's brew?"
And staggering up to the table he gripped the soft white wrist of the
woman with fingers of steel.
Sidonia's eyes narrowed as she gazed into those of the man.
"Do you love that one, too?" she said, wrenching herself free. "Or have
you lied to her as you have lied to me?"
"Your voice sounds like the cry from a dark gallery that leads to
Hell," Basil replied. "You, alone, have I loved all these years, and
for your fell beauty have I risked all I have done and am about to do!"
"Fear speaks in your voice," Sidonia replied with a cruel smile upon
her lips. "You are in my power, else had you long ago consigned me to a
place whence there is no return. With me the secret of another's death
would go to the grave."
"Nay, you do not understand!" Basil interposed. "The woman who has
aroused Theodora's maddened jealousy is nothing to me. But I have other
plans concerning her--she must be saved!"
"Other plans?" replied Sidonia darkly. "What other plans? What sort of
woman is she who can arouse the jealousy of Theodora?"
"White and cold as the snows of the North."
"A stranger in Rome?"
"The wife of one whose days are numbered, if I rightly read the oracle."
"What is this plan?" Sidonia insisted.
"She is to be delivered to Hassan Abdullah, as reward for his aid in
the great stroke that is about to fall."
In the distance whimpered a bell.
"And, when the hour tolls--the hour of which you have so often
prated--when you sit in the high seat of the Senator of Rome--where
then will I be, who have watched your power grow and have aided it in
its upward flight?"
Basil's face lighted up with the fires within.
"Where else but by my side? Who dares defy us and the realms of the
Underworld?"
"Who, indeed?" Sidonia replied with a dark, inscrutable glance into
Basil's face. "Perchance I should not love you as I do were you not as
evil as you are good to look upon! I love you, even though I know your
lying lips have professed love to many others, even though I know that
Theodora has kindled in you all the evil passions of your soul. Beware
how you play with me!"
She threw back her wide sleeves and two dazzling white arms encircled
Basil's neck.
"Await me yonder," she then turned to her visitor, pointing to a
chamber situated beyond the curtain. "We will talk this matter over!"
Basil retired and Sidonia busied herself, replacing the different
phials in the ebony chest.
After having assured herself that everything was in its place, she
picked up the lamp and disappeared behind the curtain in the background.
Deep midnight silence reigned in the gorge of Mount Aventine.
CHAPTER VIII
IN TENEBRIS
Another day had gone down the never returning tide of time. The sun was
sinking in a rosy bed of quilted clouds. All day long Hellayne had sat
brooding in her chamber, unable to shake off the lethargy of despair
that bound and benumbed her limbs, rousing herself at long intervals
just sufficiently to wring her hands for very anguish, without even the
faintest ray of hope to pierce the black night of her misery.
Just as a white border of light had been visible on the edge of the
dark cloud that hung over her, just as she had refound the man whose
love was the very breath of her existence, her evil star had again
flamed in the ascendant and, losing him anew, she had utterly lost
herself. She struggled with her thoughts, as a drowning man amid
tossing waves, groping about in the dark for a plank to float upon,
when all else has sunk in the seas around him.
She had hardly touched the food which Persephoné herself had brought to
her. Yet it seemed to her the Circassian had regarded her strangely, as
she placed the viands before her. She had tried to frame a question,
but her lips seemed to refuse the utterance, and at last Persephoné had
departed, with the mocking promise to return later, to inquire how the
Lady Hellayne had spent the day.
Now it seemed to her as if a poison breath of evil was slowly
permeating the narrow confines of her chamber. Something she had never
before experienced was floating before her vision, was creeping into
her brain, was booming in her ears, was turning her blood to ice.
Was it the voiceless echo of an ill-omened incantation, handed down
through generations of poisoners and witches from the time of pagan
Rome?
"Hecaten voco,
Voco Tisiphonem,
Spargens avernales aquas,
Te morti devoveo; te diris ago."
Was she going mad?
Hellayne's hands went to her forehead.
"I think I am sane," she said to herself, "at least--as yet."
Would Heaven not come to her aid? She was but a weak woman who in
vain--too often in vain--had tried to snatch a few moments of happiness
from life. Ah! If Death knew what a service he would render her! But
no! She would brace her heart strings more than ever. She would renew
her fight with dusk and madness. She would face and challenge each mad
phantom--make it speak--reveal itself,--or she would break the silence
of that monstrous place at least with her own voice. Though flesh was
weak she would be strong to-night--but--ah God! here they came trooping
out of the night.
She cowered back, shuddering, her eyes fixed on the dusky depths of the
chamber.
It was the blue one--the one whose limbs and cheeks seemed made of pale
blue ice. She felt her limbs growing numb. But she would bar its way.
The finger of the freezing shape was on its lip. Did it mean that it
was dumb? Well, then, let it speak by signs. The dim blue rays that
draped its silence quaked like aspens.
"Who are you?" she forced herself to speak. "Are you Hate? You shake
your head? Are you Despair? No? Not that? Then you must be Fear!"
The figure nodded with a horrible grin.
"Fear of what?"
The phantom passed its finger slowly across its throat.
She held on to the panelling to keep from falling. Her woman's strength